How were flocks of poultry maintained hundreds of years ago?

[rollkeeg877]

I’m curious how people fed flocks of poultry throughout the year hundreds of years ago before the convenience of processed poultry feeds. I know free ranging flocks was way more common as well as food scraps but how did people maintain them when food was more scarce like in the winter months.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I have seen this discussed in bits and pieces here but I don't know the actual answer. I just popped in to provide an anecdote. I have heard from my husband that his old country neighbor fed his chickens on just scraps and let them free range. I have no way to verify this unfortunately. It makes sense to me that commercial feed was created for commercial layers though and there are lots of threads about that here. I think @U_Stormcrow might have some good info on this.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

A combination of factors.

1) Poultry ownership was often anciliary to other farming activities. So yes, the poultry got kitchen scraps and often corn or something resembling what we today call "scratch". But they also got to free range much larger areas than most of us enjoy today, and they got what the cow, pig, dogs, goats, etc missed. They also got the crops in the fields that fell off the vine, got missed by the combine, lost in the winnowing, too bruised, bug eaten, to be used in the kitchen, etc - lots of "other" sources of food.

2) Birds "back in the day" grew slower, were smaller, laid fewer eggs, and had lower hatch rates - all things that result in reduced metabolic needs compared to their modern equivalent.

Remember that "a chicken in every pot" was a political slogan until the second half of last century - and that was on Sundays, not every day. Its only the last few generations where significant animal protein essentially every dinner, and about 50% (or more) of the remaining meals has become the US norm.

3) Ever hear the phrase "spring chicken"? Its because the flock was culled heavily going into winter, so there were simply fewer poultry mouths to feed. Then the flock size would be grown up by hatching fresh birds in late winter/early spring as food began to become more available. Undesired birds (males) would be sold in spring when they were still young and tender.

That French classic, coq au vin, is what you did with your second year rooster after he produced the spring and summer birds. Add alcohol and simmer into submission what would otherwise be a tough, nearly inedible, bird. Acid in the wine helped to denature proteins (creating the illusion of tenderness, long cook times allowed the collagens to gelatinize, and the alcohol helped bring out some flavors, buffer others - as well as helping with sanitation).

4) People who were raising poultry seriously fed their birds. They fed them nutritionally well designed rations. @saysfaa has located some older books on feeding chickens - and while they didn't always know why a recipe worked (in fact, some admit that there is an "x" factor they couldn't measure, but are certain exists, which was critical to chicken's productivity) - thru trial and error they settled on a number of recipes that are roughly equivalent to a "modern" commercial ration. The "x" factor, btw, was Methionine. Measuring the sulphur containing amino acids individiually came about late last century, and is still relatively expensive.

Some of those recipes are collected here. You will note that many of them cointained animal proteins - either from "meat scraps" or from milk byproducts like whey.

Commercial feed, btw, is about 110 years old now. 1910-1920 range.

There are other factors, and of course exceptions to such broad strokes, but the above accounts for much of it. Hope that helps.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m curious how people fed flocks of poultry throughout the year hundreds of years ago before the convenience of processed poultry feeds. I know free ranging flocks was way more common as well as food scraps but how did people maintain them when food was more scarce like in the winter months.

I think you are talking about small farmers and village dwellers that kept flocks for meat and eggs, not the rich folks that kept flocks of decorative breeds because they were pretty or unusual. Of course it will depend a lot on your climate, how rough was your winter. The answer will be different in an Ontario winter versus a Gulf Coast winter.

The chickens were livestock, not pets. You take care of livestock but you don't pamper them. During the good weather months cattle, sheep, and such were expected to feed themselves on forage. A milk cow or plow horse would get additional supplements but beef cattle ate grass, for example. Chickens were much the same. Chickens were expected to find their own plant matter and animals to eat. And they could if there was much variety in the land. Don't think of a manicured lawn, think more of overgrown fence rows, weeds, brushland, and pastureland. Unmowed areas with lots of different kinds of grasses and weeds, many of them going to seed so they could eat the seeds. And all kinds of bugs, worms, grubs, mice, lizards, and other things to eat. Chickens could live well on that.

Even during your Ontario winters you'd be surprised at how much forage chickens can find, even with the snow. Not all of your wild birds currently depend on your bird feeders to get through the winter. I know grouse eat a bit differently than chickens but they don't have problems overwintering north of you. This was before you had your fields of grain that after harvest still leave a surprising amount of forage for wildlife.

U_Stormcrow covered a lot of it but I'm not talking about commercial chickens or well-thought-out formulas. I'm talking about illiterate subsistence farmers or villagers that learned how to keep chickens from their parents. I'm not sure they had much understanding how or why it worked, just that it did.

Chickens could not do well in your winters the way grouse do. Chickens can harvest a lot from other farm animals leavings, even in winter. That means hay, grain, and even droppings. And people would feed them table scraps and grain that they grew.

An example. I grew up on a subsistence farm in the hills and ridges of Eat Tennessee, in the Cumberland Gap area next to the Kentucky line. I'm ancient but not hundreds of years old. Our chickens fed themselves almost year around. During the good weather months our table scraps went to the pigs that we butchered in the fall. After the hogs were butchered in the fall the kitchen scraps were tossed out where the chickens could get them. The cows and horses were fed hay on the ground. The chickens were often seen scratching in that area. When snow was on the ground we'd toss them some corn we raised primarily to fatten the pigs and to supplement the milk cow and work horses' food. We bought nothing for the chickens, horses, pigs, or cattle to eat. We raised, harvested, and stored it all.

By the way. Dad never graduated college but he did attend some. His interest was agriculture. He wanted to be a farmer. I think he did have a basic understanding of how and why it worked. But his greatest education for that was watching his father and grandfather do it.

 

[SourRoses]

It's come up fairly often. Attached is a book written over a hundred years ago.

Some products from the diversified farm offered nutrition for poultry that few keepers would consider feeding to chickens today for cost reasons.
One of those is milk. They had discard milk products before the age of easy cheap refrigeration, whey from making cheese, meat scraps from butchering large animals...
And their expectations were different. 2-3 eggs per week?!
Farmers did not allow hens to live past their second year, in the name of efficiency, but in truth many of the hens fared poorly after producing so much on barely enough. Just picture an "old stew hen" and keep in mind she was only 2.
A lot of the heritage breeds are capable of a much longer useful laying life than that.

They can survive that way -- in a favorable climate and ecological zone -- but they will neither thrive nor produce well.

These are not our great-grandparents' chickens. This book from 100 years ago talks about how to get a profitable 100 eggs per hen per year -- from LEGHORNS.

My worst layer, a Light Brahma did better than that. Modern Leghorns are expected to produce 300 eggs per year.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/poultry-for-the-farm-and-home.1443907/

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I think you are talking about small farmers and village dwellers that kept flocks for meat and eggs, not the rich folks that kept flocks of decorative breeds because they were pretty or unusual. Of course it will depend a lot on your climate, how rough was your winter. The answer will be different in an Ontario winter versus a Gulf Coast winter.

The chickens were livestock, not pets. You take care of livestock but you don't pamper them. During the good weather months cattle, sheep, and such were expected to feed themselves on forage. A milk cow or plow horse would get additional supplements but beef cattle ate grass, for example. Chickens were much the same. Chickens were expected to find their own plant matter and animals to eat. And they could if there was much variety in the land. Don't think of a manicured lawn, think more of overgrown fence rows, weeds, brushland, and pastureland. Unmowed areas with lots of different kinds of grasses and weeds, many of them going to seed so they could eat the seeds. And all kinds of bugs, worms, grubs, mice, lizards, and other things to eat. Chickens could live well on that.

Even during your Ontario winters you'd be surprised at how much forage chickens can find, even with the snow. Not all of your wild birds currently depend on your bird feeders to get through the winter. I know grouse eat a bit differently than chickens but they don't have problems overwintering north of you. This was before you had your fields of grain that after harvest still leave a surprising amount of forage for wildlife.

U_Stormcrow covered a lot of it but I'm not talking about commercial chickens or well-thought-out formulas. I'm talking about illiterate subsistence farmers or villagers that learned how to keep chickens from their parents. I'm not sure they had much understanding how or why it worked, just that it did.

Chickens could not do well in your winters the way grouse do. Chickens can harvest a lot from other farm animals leavings, even in winter. That means hay, grain, and even droppings. And people would feed them table scraps and grain that they grew.

An example. I grew up on a subsistence farm in the hills and ridges of Eat Tennessee, in the Cumberland Gap area next to the Kentucky line. I'm ancient but not hundreds of years old. Our chickens fed themselves almost year around. During the good weather months our table scraps went to the pigs that we butchered in the fall. After the hogs were butchered in the fall the kitchen scraps were tossed out where the chickens could get them. The cows and horses were fed hay on the ground. The chickens were often seen scratching in that area. When snow was on the ground we'd toss them some corn we raised primarily to fatten the pigs and to supplement the milk cow and work horses' food. We bought nothing for the chickens, horses, pigs, or cattle to eat. We raised, harvested, and stored it all.

By the way. Dad never graduated college but he did attend some. His interest was agriculture. He wanted to be a farmer. I think he did have a basic understanding of how and why it worked. But his greatest education for that was watching his father and grandfather do it.

This is exactly what I think my husband was talking about. Almost the same area of the country as well. The land was farmed for generations and now that no one wants to carry on it's sad to see it being sold and also to lose the wealth of knowledge that went with it. I would love to ask that neighbor if he really did feed them only scraps and how he kept them from getting eaten by the hawks, etc but he's gone and half the land has been sold to developers. It's a real pity.

 

[SourRoses]

A combination of factors.

1) Poultry ownership was often anciliary to other farming activities. So yes, the poultry got kitchen scraps and often corn or something resembling what we today call "scratch". But they also got to free range much larger areas than most of us enjoy today, and they got what the cow, pig, dogs, goats, etc missed. They also got the crops in the fields that fell off the vine, got missed by the combine, lost in the winnowing, too bruised, bug eaten, to be used in the kitchen, etc - lots of "other" sources of food.

2) Birds "back in the day" grew slower, were smaller, laid fewer eggs, and had lower hatch rates - all things that result in reduced metabolic needs compared to their modern equivalent.

Remember that "a chicken in every pot" was a political slogan until the second half of last century - and that was on Sundays, not every day. Its only the last few generations where significant animal protein essentially every dinner, and about 50% (or more) of the remaining meals has become the US norm.

3) Ever hear the phrase "spring chicken"? Its because the flock was culled heavily going into winter, so there were simply fewer poultry mouths to feed. Then the flock size would be grown up by hatching fresh birds in late winter/early spring as food began to become more available. Undesired birds (males) would be sold in spring when they were still young and tender.

That French classic, coq au vin, is what you did with your second year rooster after he produced the spring and summer birds. Add alcohol and simmer into submission what would otherwise be a tough, nearly inedible, bird. Acid in the wine helped to denature proteins (creating the illusion of tenderness, long cook times allowed the collagens to gelatinize, and the alcohol helped bring out some flavors, buffer others - as well as helping with sanitation).

4) People who were raising poultry seriously fed their birds. They fed them nutritionally well designed rations. @saysfaa has located some older books on feeding chickens - and while they didn't always know why a recipe worked (in fact, some admit that there is an "x" factor they couldn't measure, but are certain exists, which was critical to chicken's productivity) - thru trial and error they settled on a number of recipes that are roughly equivalent to a "modern" commercial ration. The "x" factor, btw, was Methionine. Measuring the sulphur containing amino acids individiually came about late last century, and is still relatively expensive.

Some of those recipes are collected here. You will note that many of them cointained animal proteins - either from "meat scraps" or from milk byproducts like whey.

Commercial feed, btw, is about 110 years old now. 1910-1920 range.

There are other factors, and of course exceptions to such broad strokes, but the above accounts for much of it. Hope that helps.

Would you mind maybe writing this up as an article we could easily share when the topic comes up?

 

[Perris]

I’m curious how people fed flocks of poultry throughout the year hundreds of years ago before the convenience of processed poultry feeds. I know free ranging flocks was way more common as well as food scraps but how did people maintain them when food was more scarce like in the winter months.

you may find these useful too: feed recipes from the 1930s
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/interwar-recipes-for-chicken-feed.1605509/

some facts and figures on how many eggs hens laid 150 years ago, correcting common modern myths about it
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-many-eggs-were-laid-by-hens-150-years-ago.1593024/

And there are a lot of old poultry manuals available online, freely, here https://www.hathitrust.org/ , https://archive.org/ or https://library.si.edu/departments/biodiversity-heritage-library

 

[Altairsky]

My grandparents only gave corn to their chickens, as supplement. Everything else they ate all sort of vegetable scraps (the same scraps that were fed to the pigs), and they were extremely busy foraging in the cow manure. Lots of bugs, worms and undigested cereals in there. They obviously had a lot of space to free range.
Traditionally, where I live, chicks were fed boiled egg + polenta wheat -which is ground corn- + a little bit of wine which was thought to have antibiotic properties.
The chickens could actually live long lives on that diet: when §°I was a little kid I had my pet hen. She was a leghorn with neurological issues. My grandparents never culled her because she was my pet and she lived for many many years. She died because she was run over by the tractor one day.

 

[Loving my girls]

Unfortunately I am now old enough to refer back to my great grandmother who was born over a hundred years ago (my grandmother was born in 1920)
I remember playing (chasing ) her birds as a child and she had big frightening dogs which protected them (maybe) I have a child’s memory of her stirring something on the hob (in her pinny) for her hens which smelt awful (however that could’ve been for me and my great grandad ) it had its own special pan. Except she would boil the beetroot in it too. I recall it looking like slop (not the beetroot) and had bits on top that looked like carrot. She used to put stuff from the veg plot into it. Leaves and stuff.
My grandmother did the same but I used to feed them the wild blackberries nanna and I picked (without telling nanna) because they had lots of pips. I remember Nanna discuss the strange hen poop with my mother.
I remember lots from my youth but have no idea what I did yesterday